Upon her arrival in Shoal Harbor, Maine, Lily Jackson hears eerie moans that the
locals claim are the ghostly cries of the unfortunate Breckenridge women.
Running from loss and setback in Cincinnati, Lily needs the job as
semi-psychiatric caregiver for Andrew Breckenridge, but the storm she has to
weather from the oldest Breckenridge brother is severe. Clinton Breckenridge is
a brooding man used to getting his own way, and he’s not convinced Lily is the
right person to help his troubled younger brother.

Even as Lily starts
picking up the pieces of Andrew’s tortured psyche and finding out his dark
secrets, another mystery looms before her. Andrew’s lover has gone missing in
recent months and no one knows what has happened to her, or if her voice has
joined those of the other Breckenridge women. Before she knows it, Lily finds
herself in danger—thrust directly into the eye of the raging storm.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

My buddy James Reasoner has a new Judge Earl Stark story out there! If you haven't read the other books in the series, it doesn't matter. This is a fine addition to the series and new readers can jump right in.

Big Earl rides again!

Earl Stark was once a fast-shooting stagecoach
guard in Texas before taking up the study of law, becoming an attorney, and
eventually being appointed a federal district court judge. Now he combines a
keen legal mind with a frontiersman's gun-handy toughness to bring justice to
the Old West.

One of New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner's
most popular characters, Judge Earl Stark is back in a brand-new 27,000 word
short novel full of action and mystery. THE SILVER ALIBI finds him dealing with
feuding mine owners, bushwhackers, cold-blooded murder, and a wild ruckus that
lands Judge Stark himself behind bars before he can nab a ruthless
killer.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Matt journeys to a tiny Adirondack town where the entire population is infected
with evil, a horrific phenomenon possibly related to a hydro-fracking operation
that's stirring up community outrage...and resurrecting a blood-thirsty terror
deadlier than anything he's ever faced. He soon finds himself pitted against his
nemesis Mr. Dark in an epic battle that stretches back to the lost colony
Roanoke... and could change the fate of mankind.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

I picked this one up and am looking forward to settling in with it soon! Just in time for Christmas!

Black Sun Reich: Part One of three in The Spear of
Destiny, the first novel in a new steampunk, horror, alternate history,
action-adventure series set in a 1920s where the Nazis have begun their
subjugation of the world using the occult, advanced science, and a holy relic
with awesome powers.

And don’t miss the other parts of this
serialized novel - Part Two: Death’s Head Legion and Part Three: Shadows Will
Fall.

Trey Garrison recaptures the unapologetic adventure, wonder and excitement of
the classic pulp fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, blending elements of steampunk
with deeply-researched historical fiction and a good dose of humor. The novel
also explores major philosophical and moral issues relevant to our contemporary
world: the trade-off between security and liberty, the morality of pre-emptive
war, and what fundamentally separates good from evil.

The North American continent is made up of several rival nations, and a Cold
War is building between them. The Nazis rose to power a decade earlier. People
travel by airship and powerful organizations calculate with Babbage’s
Difference Engine. The Nazis have hatched a plot to raise a legion of undead
soldiers.

Enter Sean Fox Rucker, Jesus D’Anconia Lago, two Great War veterans and
freelance pilots who are pulled into the quest. They are joined by a brash
Greek merchant, a brilliant Jewish cowboy, and the woman who once broke
Rucker’s heart. This ragtag band of reluctant, bickering, swashbuckling heroes
soon is locked in a globe-spanning race against Nazi occultists, clockwork
assassins, and a darkly charismatic commando. In a world where science and the
supernatural co-exist, and the monsters of legend are as real necromancers who
summon them from dark realms, our heroes alone stand before the rising
darkness. But all their efforts may not be enough.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Time has not been kind to me. I once was very beautiful. I once was cherished.Now?I’m a scrimshaw doll. I was created for a child and cursed to protect a woman. I’ve been protecting those seeking true love well before 1716 when my story began being recorded. It all began with a gypsy man named Enzo, and his wife Rosa, whom I was made in the memory of.I have been many places and seen many countries. I have traveled by ship, horse and automobile.Read about the adventures here.Newest book:

Sometimes, secrets refuse to stay buried--

A ten-year-old accidental
killing and an ancient cursed doll are only part of Julia Bennett's problems.
When she returns to her hometown of Covington, Oklahoma for an old friend's
funeral, she's thrust into the middle of a murder case--and discovers she never
stopped loving her high school sweetheart.

Jake Devlin is now the sheriff
of Covington and faced with solving a murder. He isn't surprised to find Julia
in the middle of things. She still seems like the troublemaker whose reckless
mistake caused a man's death years ago--and who broke his heart when she left
him without so much as a goodbye.

Jake makes it clear he's over her, and
Julia can't wait to leave Covington behind. But when another friend dies, she
knows she must stay. Can they put the past behind them and stop a killer before
he claims another victim?

Monday, December 10, 2012

In the year 2030, a meteor the size of Manhattan impacted the central United
States. Thirty years and billions of dead later, humanity's extinction is only
beginning...

When he is ejected from his home, sixteen-year-old Alex
Keener is forced to survive in a blighted wasteland that threatens to take
everyone and everything he holds dear. He must survive against the elements,
against raiders, and much, much worse...

In the hopelessness of the
wastes, Alex must find a reason to live. Joined by a butt-kicking,
pistol-wielding heroine, the stakes get even higher when Alex discovers he might
be the only one standing between the world and a second apocalypse...

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Set in London at the turn of the last century, the novel follows the stories of three intelligent and very talented young women, all of whom are assistants to very powerful men: Cora, lab assistant to a member of parliament; Michiko, Japanese fight assistant to a martial arts guru; and Nellie, a magician’s assistant. The three young women’s lives become inexorably intertwined after a chance meeting at a ball that ends with the discovery of a murdered mystery man.

It’s up to these three, in their own charming but bold way, to solve the murder—and the crimes they believe may be connected to it??without calling too much attention to themselves.

Told with Adrienne Kress’s sharp wit and a great deal of irreverence, this Steampunk whodunit introduces three unforgettable and very ladylike–well, relatively ladylike–heroines poised for more dangerous adventures.

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Frankie ‘The Piston’ Corleone was an up-and-coming light
heavyweight fighter until a broken hand took him out of contention. Now, Frankie
works as a private eye, occasionally taking sparring work to stay in shape make
ends meet.

Cappy O’Brien has trained a lot of fighters, including
Frankie. But Cappy has never had a real contender until now ... Candy Marquez is
the real deal, and after being battered by Marquez during several rounds of
sparring, Frankie has to agree. But the fight game is as crooked as a dog’s hind
leg, and other trainers and the mob all want a piece of Cappy’s best
prospect.

When Cappy winds up dead, it’s time for Frankie to take off the
gloves and take The Piston’s punching power to the street to knockout a killer
...

My good buddy Wayne D. Dundee has a new anthology out that collects his Joe Hannibal short stories, including one new story written just for this book. The stories cover Hannibal's career over the last 30 years, making the detective one of the longest-lived in the annals of criminal investigation.

Wayne's got quite a spread in these six stories, taking Hannibal from Illinois to Nebraska, where he's currently living. Look for his new Joe Hannibal novel, Blade of the Tiger, coming soon!

Friday, November 16, 2012

Been so busy with deadlines and college that I plumb missed this one. Making up for it now. This is by my buddy James Reasoner (one of the writers on the Rancho Diablo series) and his wife. It's the seventh book in their long-running Wind River series.

The Wyoming Territory town of Wind River has gotten so peaceful that some people
think it's downright civilized. But they don't know that a gang of vicious
outlaws is planning a military-style raid on the settlement that will clean out
the bank and the other businesses. Anyone who gets in their way will be cut down
in a hail of bullets.

Through a twist of fate, a beautiful young woman finds
herself taken prisoner by the outlaws, and it's up to Marshal Cole Tyler and
Texas cowboy Lon Rogers to pursue the desperadoes and rescue Brenda Durand . . .
if they don't wind up on the receiving end of some outlaw lead first!

RANSOM
VALLEY is a brand-new 42,000 word novel from award-winning authors James
Reasoner and L.J. Washburn. It's the first new entry in more than a decade in
the bestselling Wind River series and is filled with the same blend of action,
humor, drama, and compelling characters as the first six novels. If you haven't
paid a visit to Wind River yet, now's the time!

In the faery slums of Bath, Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie live by these words. Bartholomew and Hettie are changelings--Peculiars--and neither faeries nor humans want anything to do with them.

One day a mysterious lady in a plum-colored dress comes gliding down Old Crow Alley. Bartholomew watches her through his window. Who is she? What does she want? And when Bartholomew witnesses the lady whisking away, in a whirling ring of feathers, the boy who lives across the alley--Bartholomew forgets the rules and gets himself noticed.

First he's noticed by the lady in plum herself, then by something darkly magical and mysterious, by Jack Box and the Raggedy Man, by the powerful Mr. Lickerish . . . and by Arthur Jelliby, a young man trying to slip through the world unnoticed, too, and who, against all odds, offers Bartholomew friendship and a way to belong.

Part murder mystery, part gothic fantasy, part steampunk adventure, "The Peculiar" is Stefan Bachmann's riveting, inventive, and unforgettable debut novel.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

When Randy Post, a young cowboy riding for the Rancho Diablo brand, gets accused
of murdering a saloon girl, Sam Blaylock saddles up to get to the bottom of the
matter before they fit him for a hangman's noose. Sam doesn't know that the
murder has set off a chain of events that will end up with him swapping lead
with a murderous gang of robbers eyeing one of the banks in Shooter's
Cross.

In the past, Marshal Everett Tolliver and Sam Blaylock haven't
seen exactly eye-to-eye on things involving the ranch hands. Tolliver intends to
hold the peace in town no matter what the cost. But he's going to need help if
he's going to find out who murdered Jessie Holden in cold blood.

Even
after they've set there differences aside for the time being, Sam and Tolliver
still have to put their lives at risk to hold the line in Shooter's Cross in a
gundown on Main Street that will become a legend.

After winning his latest bout in Berlin, US Army
boxing champ Sergeant Kevin Crowley is on military leave in Ireland. Raised in
St. Vincent's Asylum For Boys in Chicago, he has finally returned to the place
of his birth, where he is sure he will find the family he never knew and lay
claim to his dream of a royal fortune.

What Crowley actually finds is the
fight of his life... A near destitute grandmother, crippling debt left by a
father he never knew, a feisty redhead with hatred in her heart, a villainous
landlord and his gang who'll stop at nothing to settle a score going back a
generation...

Kevin Crowlwy has never backed down in the ring or out...
The treasures and truth awaiting him in Dublin are not what he first imagined.
But with his past, his family, and his future at stake, Crowley will put up his
dukes and fight like never before...

Monday, November 12, 2012

Joseph Nassise shook up the urban fantasy genre with Eyes to See, a
novel New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry called
“heartbreaking, deeply insightful, powerful and genuinely thrilling.” In a
devil’s deal, Jeremiah Hunt sacrificed his human sight in exchange for the power
to see the hidden world of ghosts and all of the darker spirits that prowl the
streets. Hunt uncovered a world of murder and magic that took his daughter from
him and nearly cost him his life, but that was only the beginning....

Now Hunt is on the run from the FBI, who have pegged him as a mass-murdering
dark sorcerer. His flight from the law is diverted to New Orleans when his
companion, a potent witch, has a horrific vision of the city under magical
siege. When they arrive, they realize that the situation is more dire than they
could have imagined: the world of the living faces a terrifying attack by forces
from beyond the grave. King of the Dead, the second book in this
groundbreaking series, promises more of Nassise’s electrifying writing that will
enthrall readers looking for a supercharged, supernatural thrill.

A Seed on the Wind is the first part of Cat Rambo’s lyrical exploration of the
bottomless world of the Fathomless Abyss.

When the people of a million
worlds and a million times fall into the Abyss, they bring with them not only
the better angels of their natures, but their worst. And there are some who find
solace in a fantasy within a fantasy, a dream within a dream … what usually
becomes a nightmare within a nightmare, a hell within a hell…

When the
slightest misplaced step can send you falling forever and ever, there can be a
compulsion to get high, and stay that way. And Bill has come in to a little bit
of money, and a lot of lost time. And he discovers that in an impossible place
that goes forever downward, the deepest abyss may be in his own heart.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Just found this and I'm gonna save it up for a chill autumn night for a time when I want goose bumps and to be scared of the things outside in the dark.

In an exquisitely chilling debut novel, four children unravel the
mystery of a family curse — and a ghostly creature known in folklore as Long
Lankin.

When Cora and her younger sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with
their elderly aunt in the isolated village of Byers Guerdon, they receive a
less-than-warm welcome. Auntie Ida is eccentric and rigid, and the girls are
desperate to go back to London. But what they don’t know is that their aunt’s
life was devastated the last time two young sisters were at Guerdon Hall, and
she is determined to protect her nieces from an evil that has lain hidden for
years. Along with Roger and Peter, two village boys, Cora must uncover the
horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its dark grip for centuries —
before it’s too late for little Mimi. Riveting and intensely atmospheric, this
stunning debut will hold readers in its spell long after the last page is
turned.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Hands down, cover art sells books. The better the cover art, the more a book sells. The downside is that it also raises reader expectations. I've picked up some books that have had outstanding cover art, only to be seriously disappointed.

I know some writers who seriously wished they could have picked their book cover artists. Cover artists don't much care, to an extent. They get paid a flat raid in this business. But I'm sure there have been some artists who got really embarrassed over some of the books they've been on.

But I digress. I love the cover above. It's a basic black and white shot of an interesting, aggressive female in a spooky fog-shrouded forest. Love the big tree with added copy stuck on it. And that's interesting because if the copy hadn't been there, the tree would have balanced the woman out and been distracting. We the copy on it, we kind of ignore the tree because the copy pushes it back into the background once you've digested the message.

Then there's the mixs of colors (orange and green) which don't always go well together on book covers, but in this case serve to bring that "dead" looking forest to life a little by warming up the page.

I like the author and picked up the book based on past reads, but that cover would have sold me even if this had been someone new.

Conall O’Quinn grew up at St. Vincent’s Asylum For
Boys, a Chicago orphanage where he learned the sweet science of boxing from
Father Tim, the battling priest. After a stint in the Army, Conall finds work on
the docks of San Francisco – a place where his fists make him the dock champion.
Soon, however, he gets on the bad side of a union boss and is set up for a dock
side brawl designed to knockout his fighting career. When Conall comes out on
top, things go from bad to worse when he is framed for the docks going up in
flames.

Along with Benson, his best friend and trainer, Conall heads for
the hills in search of a lost treasure in the vicinity of a mine controlled by
the union boss. However, where Conall goes trouble follows and he is quickly
embroiled in a heated grudge match between fist-happy miners and
lumberjacks.

Championing the miners in an all out slugfest, Conall is
about to find out there is more to fighting than just swinging fists … giant,
hammer-fisted lumberjacks, the mine owner’s beautiful daughter, union flunkies,
and mob thugs all want a piece of him … and when the opening bell rings, the
entire world appears to be against him …

Saturday, October 20, 2012

When I moved from Texas to New York to take my chances as a yarnspinner for the
pulps, I knew I was entering into a whole new world. As the author of the
LINCOLN LANDRY, SPACE RANGER tales for the science fiction pulps, I know a thing
or two about new worlds.

But what I wanted most of all was to get a story
in BLACK MASK magazine, the same pulp that launched the careers of Raymond
Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, to name a few.

In order to do that, I
pulled in a few favors. Who knew the chief of police was a Lincoln Landry fan?
Once I found out, though, I had him hook me up with his best homicide detective:
Jim McLane, a tough no-nonsense cop that Hammett and Chandler might have
admired.

Together, McLane and I sort through murders in the Big Apple in
1935. I didn't know I was going to learn so much, or that the price would be so
high. But between McLane and me, we generally get to the bottom of murder,
blackmail, and kidnappings.

I gotta admit, I was really leery of this television show. Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) has long been one of my favorite heroes. After he got the makeover and the attitude adjustment in the 1970s by Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams.

Bleeding heart, social gadfly, serial romantic, Ollie was a lot to deal with for anybody. He'd win me over, then break my heart. The man never had an easy life. His love life was a mess, his ward became a junkie (one of the first heroes to succumb in comics), and he didn't know if he wanted to rage against the machine or remake the machine in his own image. He stepped over the line as a vigilante more than once and earned the ire of his family and his friends.

His death didn't get any easier. Yeah, DC killed him to create Connor Hawke, the new Green Arrow -- and DC later destroyed him, and now he's been retconned completely out of existence in the New 52 brand.

To be fair, I think that Green Lantern's death was much worse. He came back as the Spectre for a time, which was entirely weird.

The television show is a guilty pleasure. My wife is even interested in it. The series has set Ollie up as a Batman like vigilante, which stands to reason because Green Arrow was kind of like a Batman knockoff back in the day (Batmobile = ArrowCar, Batplane = ArrowPlane [get it?]). But this version of Ollie is mean and tough and physically capable in hand-to-hand combat. He's struggling with the whole dual identity thing, only it's taking shape right in front of our eyes.

Before Ollie supposedly "died" five years ago, he was an irresponsible playboy. He took his girlfriend's sister out on a cruise for some illicit romance and got her killed. See? The showrunners are making sure Ollie's love life is screwed up. Then he comes back from this island a changed man, no longer the playboy and now every ounce a man willing to put his life on the line.

It's a big change. His body is covered in scars. He's learned archery, martial arts, Russian, some kind of parkour/free running, and a whole new way of looking at life. Instead of giving viewers an "origin" story, the series is parsing out the information in brief, tantalizing flashbacks in the middle of a cornucopia of plot problems and all-out action.

If you haven't caught the series yet, you should. Do it now before the plotlines get more tricky and more advanced and you don't get to see the battlelines being drawn or the group of avengers come together.

"I can just imagine the questions in history," Fox said. "Who was our first of
it, maybe the second one's too hard. But you get the idea!"

"Yeah," Burns
said. "I get the idea."

Hartley Gorman College, in Pecan City, Texas, is
hardly a bastion of serious scholarship. The little Baptist school is more
interested in shielding its students from the evil influence of The World, The
Flesh, and The Devil than in turning out future Nobelists. But its staff, by and
large, is worthy of a more demanding institution; they are victims of a glutted
market in Ph.D.s and they do the best they can. So it is they who are most upset
at Dean Elmore's "secret plan" to award credit hours for "undirected study" by
"independent scholars"—in plain words, to turn the school into a diploma
mill.

Which may be why Dean Elmore, shortly after unveiling his plan, is
found bludgeoned to death at his desk. It is certainly why, at his funeral,
there is not a wet eye in the house.

Or so observes Carl Burns, Hartley
Gorman professor of English literature, through whose eyes we see both the crime
and the larger picture of this wacky denominational Texas school.

Those
readers familiar with Bill Crider's books about Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Blacklin
County, Texas, knows how wryly witty this author can be; here the humor is
revved up a few notches, and the resulting account of Elmore's murder, Sheriff
"Boss" Napier's investigation, Bums's well-meant meddling, and the people and
doings at Hartley Gorman are the exactly-right mix of realism and wackiness to
make the book a delight as well as a suspenseful mystery.

ABOUT BILL
CRIDER : "I was born and brought up in Mexia (that's pronounced Muh-HAY-uh by
the natives), Texas. The town's most famous former citizen is Anna Nicole Smith,
whom my brother taught in biology class when she was in the ninth grade. I've
always lived in small Texas towns, unless you count Austin as a large town. It
wasn't so large when I lived there, though. I attended The University of Texas
at Austin for many, many years. My wife (the lovely Judy) says that I would
never have left grad school if she hadn't forced me to get out and get a real
job. I eventually earned my Ph.D. there, writing a dissertation on the
hardboiled detective novel, and thereby putting my mystery-reading habit to good
use. Before that, I'd gotten my M.A. at the University of North Texas (in
Denton), and afterward I taught English at Howard Payne University for twelve
years. Then I moved to scenic Alvin, Texas, where until 2002 I was the Chair of
the Division of English and Fine Arts. I retired in August 2002 to become a
either a full-time writer or a part-time bum. Take your pick."

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

The Civil War took nearly everything from Brodie. A beautiful redhead named Eva
took what was left. When she turned to him for help, he had every reason in the
world to tell her to go to hell.

Instead he strapped on his gun and
walked right into a blazing hell himself.

SAVAGE BLOOD is a brand-new
hardboiled Western novella from James Reasoner, bestselling author of the Wind
River series, the Judge Earl Stark series, and co-author of the Rancho Diablo
series. It's 16,000 words of action and excitement from a master storyteller.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

People often ask me how to layout books for ebook publication. I recommend both of these books, depending on your computer preference. They're succinct and dead on the money as far as tips and tricks go.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

The Lost Colony of Roanoke—even having written a novel inspired by this piece
of history, which happened hundreds of years ago, typing the words still gives
me a shiver. And why not? It's shivery stuff. In the 1580s, Sir Walter Raleigh
got Queen Elizabeth I's permission to found a permanent colony in the New World.
After an initial failed attempt, more than 100 men, women, and children signed
on to a 1587 voyage—only to find themselves in dire conditions before long.
Their leader, Governor John White, was sent back to England for help. He
returned three years later to find no trace of the colonists, save the legendary
CROATOAN carved into the bark of a tree.

There are few stories in American history that hold more allure than this
one. So it's no wonder that it's a mystery people are still trying to
definitively solve. In fact, just this year a new potential clue was found
embedded in one of White's painted maps. And I wanted to solve the mystery, too.
As I did research, I came across the name John Dee, a famed alchemist and
advisor to the Queen, who it turns out was involved in planning the colonists'
voyage… My story clicked into place. But my solution didn't involve going into
the past. Instead I decided to bring the past to us. In Blackwood, when
a mass disappearance occurs on modern day Roanoke Island it turns out two very
smart—and very modern—17-year-olds are tied to the original mystery, and that
they're the only ones who can uncover the truth, at last.

I just discovered today that I can't upload and sell an audiobook at Amazon.com. I had to call CreateSpace to verify that. They can sell music mp3s but not audiobook mp3s. I'm really confused about that. Doesn't make sense.

One of my students recorded WOODEN BOY and I think she did an awesome job, so I'm hunting a place where I can put the audiobook up. I may have to set up a site and go into the audiobook business myself. We live in interesting times where I can do that.

At any rate, I wanted to upload Jaimie Krycho's version of the first chapter of the story just so people could hear her. She did a fabulous job. She's also a fabulous writer.